Afghan soldiers desert as Taliban threatens key Helmand capital
Updated 0954 GMT (1654 HKT) April 11, 2016
Sometimes you know a war's going badly when your enemy is right in front of you.
About three miles outside the southern city of Lashkar Gah, Afghan soldiers can see a white flag. It's not one of surrender -- quite the opposite.
The flag belongs to the Taliban, and shows exactly how close the militant group is to the capital of Helmand Province.
Despite Afghan government assurances that the army can hold and retake ground, the strategic province that hundreds of NATO troops -- who have been in the country for the last 15 years -- died fighting for is closer than ever to falling to the Taliban.
Fewer than 0.1% of Syrians in Turkey in line for work permits
Critics say law does not offer refugees route to legal labour market as it requires employers to offer contracts and pay minimum wage
Fewer than 0.1% of Syrians in Turkey currently stand to gain the right to work under much-vaunted Turkish labour laws, undermining EU claims that the legislation excuses a recent decision to deport Syrian asylum-seekers back to Turkey.
Turkish employers have allowed roughly 2,000 – or 0.074% – of Turkey’s 2.7 million Syrians to apply for work permits under new legislation enacted two months ago, according to government figures provided to aid workers at a meeting in late March. The number of permits granted has not yet been disclosed.
More applications are expected in the coming months, but the statistic nevertheless highlights how the new law, enacted in January, does not offer blanket access to the labour market for all Syrians in Turkey. Instead work permits can only be given to those who have the blessing of their employers, many of whom may still be unaware of the law, or unwilling to comply with it since it would require them to pay their employees the minimum wage.
North Korea spymaster flees to South becoming 'highest-level' military defection ever
A colonel from North Korea's military spy agency has fled to South Korea last year in a rare senior-level defection, Seoul officials said Monday.
The South Korean news agency Yonhap quoted an unnamed official as saying the man was the highest-level military official ever to have defected, and had already passed on details "about the bureau's operations against South Korea".
The announcement by officials in Seoul comes three days after it was revealed 13 North Koreans working at the same restaurant in a foreign country had defected to the South. It was the largest group defection since North Korea's young leader Kim Jong Un took power in late 2011. South Korean media reported the restaurant is located in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo.
Opinion: The death penalty is past its kill-by date
The number of countries that no longer apply the death penalty continues to grow. Yet the global execution count is also on the rise. That is primarily the fault of four countries, DW's Matthias von Hein writes.
The most fundamental human right - inalienable and also anchored in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights - is the right to live. This right, of course, is often violated by conflict, terrorism and crime, and it is often violated by the law. Last year, 25 states legally executed at least 1,634 human beings.
Those numbers, from Amnesty International, represent a setback in the global fight to abolish the death penalty. In 2015 the number of executions was higher than it had been at any time in the previous quarter century. And, sadly, one must assume that a great many more people lost their lives at the hands of executioners. Many countries simply refuse to release such data, treating executions like state secrets. Forty-six offenses are punishable by death in China, which does not let on how many people are killed there annually, though the total is likely more than in the rest of the world combined.
Kerry becomes 1st U.S. sec'y of state to visit Hiroshima A-bomb park
(Mainichi Japan)HIROSHIMA (Kyodo) -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday visited a peace park marking the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing in the western Japan city of Hiroshima, the first U.S. state secretary to do so.
In a symbolic gesture, Kerry offered flowers at a cenotaph for the atomic bomb victims in the Peace Memorial Park, along with his counterparts from Britain and France, the two other nuclear weapons states in the Group of Seven framework.
Kerry, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault are in Hiroshima to attend the two-day G-7 ministerial meeting from Sunday. It is also the first time that the foreign ministers of the two European countries have visited the park.
Will China save its last undammed river?
A GREENER OUTLOOK
Opponents of plans to build five dams on the Nu say they scent victory after more than a decade battling the project.
A’EYAKU, CHINA — In a remote corner of southwestern China, close to the Myanmar border, the towering Nu River gorge narrows to a frothy boil of rushing water, its powerful flow creating swirling eddies.
Thrown across the river from one rock face to the other hangs a flimsy suspension bridge. “No entrance” reads a sign on its locked and rusting gate. “For construction only.”
The abandoned bridge is the sole hint here of a lengthy environmental battle that may be nearing its end. For more than a decade, activists have fought a state-owned hydropower company’s plans to build giant dams on the Nu, the last natural river in China. Now, dam opponents say they scent victory.
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